[Rebirth Competition] Slackware for Pandora 13.37 release thread.


Because I don't know how the Pandora find other OSes at the start (I only know that works with SD), is it possible to put this distribution to an external USB HD like in the followind situation ?


External HD USB -> HUB USB -> Pandora


I always preferred HD than flash supports...
 
When you put an OS on a SD card, and you put this SD card in the left slot, it boots automatically the SD card when powering on.


If you want to boot from USB, you still need to put parts of the OS on a SD.


ED mentioned once that's it's possible to boot directly from USB, but he didn't remember how :) .


Anyway USB port consumes a lot of current, so staying with SD is okay.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Linux-SWAT said:
Anyway USB port consumes a lot of current, so staying with SD is okay.
Click to expand...

Hey, my actual notebook works for 1 + 1/2 hours with the battery... if the Pandora with an external HD works at least for 3 hours, IT'S A DEAL !! ;)
 
Sounds great, in general how much ram can you "gain" before getting a performance loss instead? I did some research and it seems in Cyanogen they use a default of 25% of the total RAM space.
 
I don't know, it's the first time i use it. I just typed the commands and checked the memory. I didn't even run Firefox ^^.


Ivanovic also think 25% is a good choice
 
Hi, really looking forward to trying this OS that you've put together out but for some reason, the downloads of both the 13.37 and current builds are stopping at 19.6mb with both I.E and Firefox. Is there an issue with the server by anychance?
 
I must have missed the other references to problems but no worries. I'll keep trying various things. Sounds freakin awesome and alot of work. Hope you get lots of votes :)
 
Finished to upload -current extra packages + md5sum.


Still no reply from urjaman.


Will take a look at OpenJDK and Libre Office.
 
Uploading a brand new rebuilt 13.37-3, 2h00 left.


Still no bluetooth.


Had no success with openjdk :/


-EDIT:


Forgot to say that the suspend to ram disable the right nub on one of my OP (non-wifi). Same with Zaxxon.


I tested only Zaxxon on the other OP, and i had no problem.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I haven't had time for extensive testing, but I have some impressions to post anyway. Hopefully they will be useful for anyone standing on the sidelines wondering if/why they should install this.


As mentioned before, I was surprised and impressed by just how much work has gone into this. It's not just a distro shoe-horned into the Pandora. Linux-SWAT has "Pandorafied" this distro to almost the same extent that Angstrom is. You will find all the expected Pandora utilities (nub settings, SD mass storage, PNDstore, etc etc) built in. In some small ways it is more Pandora friendly, such as those nice fat scrollbars. It runs XFCE by default (well, it is suggested you select it as the default during setup) so the overall look and feel is completely familiar.


PND support is built in, although for reasons covered in the OP / on the wiki, compatibility is limited. That counts this out as a full time Angstrom replacement for people who just want to run PNDs, but this is not a distro you install to NAND anyway. It also comes with many pre-installed apps that are not practical to include in the official OS, including plenty of development, networking and media tools.


The biggest advantage of Slackware of course is that it is Slackware. Veterans don't need this sold to them. For Linux rookies (that's me) this means a learning curve. While you do have access to a repo, installing packages isn't as foolproof as in many other distros. Slackware makes use of build scripts to get dependencies built and installed correctly, and Linux-SWAT has provided tools and even a large selection of pre-built packages to help streamline this. But I haven't quite got my head around all it yet! I ambitiously attempted to build Mixxx, which failed. I'm up in your distros not readin' your manuals.


Performance is very good. I first ran it without swap, and the difference once I started using it was significant. Don't skip that when you're preparing your SD card. Boot up is a little slow, and shutdown even more so, but my lowly Class 2 card may be a bottleneck here.


I recommend people of any experience level give this a go. There's nothing complex about installing it - just extract the rootfs to SD, and the Pandora will autoboot from it. An 8GB card is recommended, and the download itself is significantly bigger than the official firmware at ~1GB.


(Note for Windows users: The card must be Ext2 formatted. You can prepare it on the Pandora using gparted (from repo), but extracting the rootfs on the Pandora could take hours. Best option is to run Ubuntu or something in a VM on your desktop, and prepare the card there.)


@Linux-SWAT, thanks for all your work on this. I have a few little errors to report later (they are noted on my laptop at home). And I'll have some more specific questions about using sbopkg, and your pre-built packages.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for this user's review. I'm happy to see that you noticed and used some neat features.


I myself have no time to play with it, focusing on improving here and there. I even debug in the subway or in the bus, no gaming for me these days :) .


I'm ready to answer any question, even rookies ones ^^.


At first glance, i see that some mixxx dependencies has been on my build list, but failed, at least portmidi.


I uploaded a new -current, the fourth release, adding zram, suspend to ram, tweaks etc. like 13.37.


By default, it uses the latest kernel, but recompiled natively. For 13.37, i stay with the Zaxxon i copied from the rootfs.


All kernels are shipped in both releases so you can use any of them, following the wiki's instructions.


Still no bluetooth. I'm a noob in this technology, OP is my first bt device so i have to start almost from scratch to understand how to configure it. At least i know hciconfig ^^.
 
Ah yes, my little errors. Sometimes on boot I get this (usually before login prompt):



Code: 
INIT: Id "s0" respawning too fast: disable for 5 minutes



It will sit there repeating that (every five minutes I guess) if left alone, but pressing Enter allows you to continue.



Card mounting: Only root seems to be able to mount cards - I get a popup saying Failed to mount SD/MMC, with this:



Code: 
Rejected send message, 1 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.24" (uid=1000 pid=1725 comm="exo-mount) interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume" member="Mount" error name="(unset)" requested_reply=0 destination="org.freedesktop.Hal" (uid=0 pid=1196 comm="/usr/sbin/hald)).


And when trying to log off / shutdown as regular user, it prompts for password then denies permission.


Some nice looking packages in your pre-compiled list, although I don't know what a lot of them are at a glance. Is there a way you could add descriptions? Maybe just scrape the info from slackbuilds.org or something?
 
The init message is harmless.


Seems it appeared after i used a trick to have a graphical login when typing startx.


About card mounting:


How are you mounting the card ?


What is the filesystem(s) on your card ?


How is it partitioned ?


Under Xfce, you just have to plug a card.


How are you logging off ? Under Xfce or using command line ?


Mmm i will create a different login name for myself, and test. Maybe there's some stuff that kept my testing login.


There's many libraries aside "real" programs.


There's a shipped slack-desc description in it. Like this one:


http://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/13.37/audio/mixxx/README


Will think about it. May be tricky.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Linux-SWAT
Slackware for Pandora 14.0
36 37 38
Replies
744
Views
96K
Linux-SWAT
Linux-SWAT
Linux-SWAT
Slackware for Pandora 14.1
17 18 19
Replies
371
Views
74K
Linux-SWAT
Linux-SWAT
Linux-SWAT
Slackware for Pandora 14.2
3 4 5
Replies
94
Views
32K
Linux-SWAT
Linux-SWAT
EvilDragon
Rebirth Competition Release Thread
4 5 6
Replies
105
Views
36K
qriz
Q
ingoreis
4 Ways to install Pandora Slackware(Windows/Linux/Zaxxon)
2 3 4
Replies
63
Views
21K
ingoreis
ingoreis
Back
Top